Although I am not prone to hysterics, as no sensible woman can be, it was with considerable emotion that I stood on the threshold of my ancestral home. The house  provided a sad spectacle in the low spring light. The façade of what had once been a proud and noble establishment was choked with ivy that had been absent in the time of my father. It swamped the exterior in a blanket of green, and it was as though the house had nestled under its warm cover to sleep. The windows were not shuttered, giving them the appearance of glassy black eyes.
            I remembered a time when Mordant Hall was the envy of the county, with its classical proportions and imposing height. My father, though in debt and urged strongly by my mother, refused to open the house to visitors despite the indications that the public would pay handsomely to sneak a peek into our grand house. I alone agreed with him, disgusted by the prospect of the masses gawping at our possessions. I remember the argument well. My mother sat in the drawing room dispensing tea and thin slices of bread and butter. She spoke in a low whisper at first.
            "Something must be done George. Are we to be ruined?"
I affected not to hear, for there are some things too miserable to contemplate.            "Ruined! I will allow no such thing," he roared, crashing his teacup down on its saucer. My father did not have the gift of subtle conversation.
            "Hush dear. Edith will hear." She placed a placating hand on his arm but he shook her off as he strode across the room and stood before the window. His eyes took in the extent of the deer park before him. I sat still in my window seat and pretended absorption in my embroidery. My mother glanced in my direction and, convinced that I was oblivious to their conversation, spoke again. "We must think of the girls and their future. Who will marry them when their inheritance is so uncertain?" At that time I had no wish to be married, being only fourteen and a good deal more pleased with myself than I had any right to be. I had been much affected by the recent discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb and resolved that, the moment I turned twenty one, I would sail for Egypt and become an archaeologist of world renown. In retrospect I cannot imagine what I was thinking, for my education had been neither classical nor scientific. But, what I lacked in knowledge I made up for with enthusiasm. There was not an atlas or history book in the house that did not bear the marks of my greasy thumbs as I flicked through them, dreaming of a life filled with adventure and gold.
            "I will never be married," I said, looking up from my sewing.
            "Nonsense!" cried my father.
            My mother crossed the room and sat beside me. "You will understand when you are older, darling. Someone must take care of you, and the house, when we are gone."
            I shrank back into my corner. "I am very well able to take care of myself," I announced. Of course, I had no concept of the tyranny of independence at that time. With a legion of servants to run my baths, prepare my meals, wash and press my clothes and light the fire in my room, I was as spoilt as a young woman can be. Perhaps, though, not as spoilt as my younger sister, Daisy, who entered the room at that moment. Unaware of the tension that filled the air she sat on the sofa and took a piece of bread, which she nibbled with her front teeth. At twelve she was already a striking young woman with lavender eyes and a mass of coal black hair.
            My mother left my side and wandered over to my father. She stood beside him and mumbled something into his ear. I could see him bite the inside of his cheeks as he shook his head at whatever she had said. Undeterred, she whispered again to him, but with a greater sense of urgency. Her hand on the top of his arm, she seemed to be pleading with him. With a violent shake of his shoulder, he detached himself from her and addressed my younger sister, who had eaten her bread and was now preoccupied with stirring her tea. "So. Daisy. What do you think of this? Your mother says that we are ruined and soon must leave our home."
            "Ruined father?" said Daisy.
            "Utterly ruined," I said. "We shall have to live in a cottage and churn our own butter. You will have to milk the cow."
            "Milk the cow?" said Daisy, an expression of utter incomprehension writ on her face.
            "Yes. Milk the cow, chop the wood for the fires and make up our beds every day," I replied. "If you are lucky we will give you one day off a month, for that's what our servants get now and I think it very fair."
            My father looked over from the window and smiled at Daisy's stricken face.
            "Do not tease your sister Edith. There is nothing to worry about Daisy," he said.
            "Nothing to worry about?" Repeated my mother, "How can you say such a thing?"
            I had been aware of our financial difficulties for some time, for I was a bright child and inclined to snoop. I knew that the death of my grandfather had placed a considerable burden on my parents, for he had concealed the magnitude of his debts from them. He has combined a passion for gambling with a great deal of ill-luck. Our lands, all two thousand acres, were mortgaged and a drought of some three years had struck our tenant farmers, rendering their crops useless and leaving them unable to pay us rent. 
            "We can follow the example of the Tetterley's," said my mother.
            "And open our house to strangers? For money?" My father spat out the words as though they tasted vile. He turned back to the window, his hands clasped so hard behind his back that his knuckles turned white. To follow the example of the Tetterley's was something that I could not imagine. Their Elizabethan manor, ten miles from Mordant Hall, had become something of a tourist attraction since they opened their doors last year. The Great War had not been kind to the Tetterley's, robbing them of five sons, leaving one sallow daughter permanently clad in black. Capitalizing on their grief in the most vulgar fashion imaginable, the Tetterley's had left the boys' rooms as they were when they left and opened the house as a reminder of a bygone, more innocent age. For a few shillings, visitors could gawp at not only the historical splendour of the house but at the awful memorials of the boys' rooms. The Tetterley's claimed that they were simply trying to ensure that their sons were not forgotten, but my parents were aghast.
            "It need not be anything so vulgar. We can open the reception rooms and the state bedrooms. They need not bother us for we can move into the West Wing," said my mother.
            "Need not bother us? I will not have hundreds of people tramping through my house as though we were museum pieces. And what if they steal? I will not be reduced to hiding in a corner of my own house whilst every fool able to walk trudges through my home!" said my father, his finger stabbing in the air as he emphasised each point. Daisy cowered on the sofa, her hands trembling, and my mother cried a little. I alone remained calm for I trusted my father. He could do no wrong in my eyes. I suppose I adored him because we were so similar, in temperament although not in appearance. Sometimes I deplore my stubbornness and quick temper that are the marks of his personality, and wish that I were more like Daisy, who embodies femininity.
            I pushed aside a tendril of ivy and inserted the key into the front door. With some difficulty for the lock was stiff, I entered the house for the first time in twenty years. I never did become a famed Egyptologist, or indeed an archaeologist. After the death of our parents, Daisy and I moved into the gate house, there being no money left to pay for servants or the upkeep of the house. In their final years my parents sold what little there was left of value in an effort to pay back my grandfather's debts. By the time my father realized the desperate nature of his situation and decided to open the house to the public, its contents had been stripped. Every work of art, antique and precious Persian rug had been uprooted and taken to London for auction. There was nothing left for the public to witness, aside from the shell of our once great house.
             The ceiling in the main hall had collapsed, but I picked my way over it with crunching footsteps and made my way up the main staircase to the bedroom that had once been mine. Wallpaper peeled in shreds from the damp walls of the upper hallway. I passed my parent's room. It was devoid of furniture but the worn paintwork reminded my forcibly of my mother. She had chosen a Chinese scheme as a young bride. The red and black walls that had once seemed so glamorous to me now looked like the inside of a tomb. My room was hardly more cheering. Dust lay thick on the floorboards and the windows rattled in their panes. The remains of my last day there were evident: a tea chest filled with crumpled newspaper, a cup, and a handkerchief. I remembered crying as Daisy and I left our home that day.
            But, I had not come back to mourn or reminisce. There was a purpose in this, my final visit to the hall. I felt the newspaper in my hand and was pleased to find it quite dry. From my pocket I took a box of matches and lit one over the tea chest. I placed the open matchbox on the newspaper and dropped the lit match in it. With a flare of sulphur, the newspaper caught light. With an effort, I dragged the burning tea chest behind me and jammed it in the doorway, so that the flames could lick the wood of the door. Without a backward glance, I walked away from the fire and left the hall. I locked the front door behind me and sat on the grass to watch my history go up in flames.